So you build enough of a design of tech level T. You first struggle in the number of attacking opponent units of level T-1 but you eventually kill then, you proceed to force your way forward killing the remaining of the opponent army in your way take control of a bigger part of the map. By the time you reach the enemy base, he's building the T+1 design and he mirror what you just did...

This is a game design choice made in the game which is crucial and we have to maintain it. If your opponent reach T+1 too quickly, your army of T design will turn obsolete before they can have worth of effect in the game. The game would turn into an idle cold war where both side would rush during an hour their research until they reach the end of it with no, or very few unit movement at all. If your opponent can't reach T+1 in time, he will lose too much assests. Researching T+1 (or T+2 or really researching anything) would be a bad decision and the optimal gameplay would be to just not research at all and just spam units (here mg vipers) until the end of the game.

The later is what we suffer right now. I think most people now know that in any classic low oil map bundled in the game, the only viable strategy is the FFF opening. If you do that and your opponent is only dreaming about researching something, it's GG for you. The large tech tree we have is useless. You'd be a beast to hit the power module in any competitive setup right now.

So, time of what exactly do we want to make longer by reducing DPS and not something else?Eg. time to destroy the base once MGs reach it? (reduce modifiers of MG against buildings, increase building armor?)

I have a bit of trouble thinking on how a large tech tree actually can speed up development and render specific weapons obsolete especially when compared to other more shallow in-game tech trees such as Starcraft, Warcraft, 0.A.D. etc. In those game each race is already max out in roughly 20-30 minutes of playing. The only difference is that there are less weapons unlocked and researched, which could be why units get obsolete faster here. But I think why in other games units can stay effective longer is because of the smaller maps and more fast-paced movement.

This may be a rather dumb question but what does DPS stand for? My thoughts are based on the rest of your post, I don't get what you mean by lowering DPS. Something to do with simplifying the tech tree right?

* Is there any reason (or reasons) why such changes would be ill suited to an experimental protocol and the gathering of empirical data ?

* Within a few short months of retail release in April '99, intense MPers were clear that WZ's vast tech tree (& customizing design combos) was mostly a sham. Over the decade and a half since, because of various "balance tweeks", the only thing changed in the results, it seems, is which units / tech to spam in competition play..

NoQ wrote:Well, before we start thinking, DPS was not increased evenly on everything and/or from everything (?)

Well yes, this is a unsolvable problem. I think I said earlier that the actual accuracy "model" can't be balanced. Randoms events will make units randomly ±35% stronger then expected/balanced at least once in 98% of the games. I already provided a chart on how it works.

But since developpers don't want to fix that bug anywhere soon and the game will stay random. We still have to deal with the overall DPS increase which I can approximate at 40%±25%. To brush a large picture, the increase is slowly hitting smaller targets and less accurate weapons during the course of the game until it hit his cap which make mostly all the weapons stop to miss at all.

And here I thought following discussions of the significance of the Higgs Boson were challenging.

(Though those have the advantage of transparency amongst divergent coteries. )

Take heart. Only 30 years seperated the theoretic mathematical model predicting the Higgs Boson's existence, to its confirmed discovery and continued transparent public discussion as to its significance. Then there are the ongoing experimental opportunities to gather empirical data afforded by the Hadron Collider.

Also, it's not only against structure. I'd send tanks to resist your rush and slow down your progression. Those also die faster in 3.1.1. And even while your clutch could eventualy solve the problem for machineguns, it would just postpone the problem to the next rushable weapons. Now that I took a look at those changes, I see you mainly reduced the HP of some units as a nerf. That just make the problem even worst.

Could you make a nullbot version that use that FFF opening ? Might make people more aware of how bad it is if nullbot could kick their ass no matter what they try .

It's not my favorite part of the game right now... I think you have to time your viper design with the 4rth truck out in your first factory. At that point you have 7 (or 9?) trucks 3 factory 1 lab 1 CC and you start your power production in order to build the maximum amount of viper wheel.

If you try to go any faster, you realize that you have to stop the production of the trucks at mid point and it's a waste of production point anyway. So as far as I recall it, you can send 1 truck out before the end of the building sequence with no drawback. I bet you can try building FFF once and you'll immediately see what I mean.

Even if nullbot was slow on the execution he would likely crush anyone that dont go for FFF, maybe a good FFR player could hold on... but it would be hard and the experience would still be valid.

A quick test shows that i still beat it with lab-factory-lab-factory-cc-halftracks-first though (~20 seconds poorly executed, $50 spent on recycling an accidentally placed wrong building, sitting with 7 oils vs. 10 till minute 8, when i already have a power module), mostly due to poor tank movement by the a.i.; will take a few more games before i figure out if that's enough to prove anything. But overally, i think this sort of game didn't look too bad for a 1x1 a.i. challenge.